New York's Implications of the Supreme Court's Gun Decision

You do not need a legal degree to see the irritation etched into the individual justices' opinions in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc., et al. v. Bruen, the important gun case decided on Thursday by the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court found in a 6–3 ruling that a particular New York State gun control statute is unconstitutional. Stephen Breyer comments in a dissent joined by the Court's three liberal justices that the case's ramifications are substantially larger than the majority opinion indicates. Breyer comments, "The issue before us is to what degree the Second Amendment inhibits democratically elected authorities from passing measures to address the grave problem of gun violence." "However, the Court pretends to address that question today without examining the nature or severity of the issue." Then, Breyer provides a series of statistics. There are more firearms than people in the United States. Each year, around eighty-five thousand individuals are treated for nonfatal gun-related injuries in emergency departments; each year, tens of thousands are murdered by firearms. And although mass shootings have dominated the headlines, Breyer also highlights other part of the gun violence epidemic that is sometimes overlooked: suicide. In 2015, one percent of gun-related fatalities in the United States were accidental, thirty-seven percent were murders, and the remainder, the vast majority, were suicides.

What significance do data on the use of firearms in suicides have? In his concurrence, one of the six conservative justices who joined the majority judgment, Samuel Alito, writes the following. In New York, obtaining a license to carry a firearm outside the house is more difficult than in other states due to the contested statute. "Does the opposition believe that a large number of persons who own firearms in their houses will be prevented or dissuaded from committing suicide by shooting themselves if they are prohibited from taking their firearms outside?" Alito inquires rhetorically.

Yes, in brief. It seems that a similar event occurred in the state of New York. In 2019, Briggs Depew and Isaac D. Swensen of Utah State University and Montana State University released a study on the consequences of the Sullivan Act, a 111-year-old New York statute that created the state's gun-permitting regulations. Despite the study's conclusion that the legislation "had no obvious influence on murder or suicide rates," there was "clear evidence" that it led to a significant fall in gun-related suicide rates. By comparing death data in New York and other states before and after the introduction of the Sullivan Act, Depew and Swensen discovered that gun suicides in New York decreased by 32 to 48 percent. Several prominent studies conducted in recent years have shown considerable links between suicide and gun ownership rates. Chris Murphy, a senator from Connecticut who has been one of Congress's most outspoken advocates for gun control since the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre, has said that addressing the nation's suicide issue and adopting gun-control measures are synonymous.

In the aftermath of a murder-suicide that shocked New York City in 1911, the Sullivan Act was established. In January of that year, an author called David Graham Phillips was murdered outside the Princeton Club by Fitzhugh Coyle Goldsborough, a violinist in the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. Goldsborough claimed Phillips had insulted his family in one of his books. Goldsborough turned the pistol on himself after killing Phillips, who died the next morning. In a few of months, Big Tim Sullivan, a Tammany Hall leader and state senator, pushed through legislation that would eventually serve as a blueprint for gun-control laws throughout the nation.

New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc., et al. v. Bruen was brought on behalf of Robert Nash and Brandon Koch of Rensselaer County, near Albany, who objected to a later amendment to the Sullivan Act that gives local officials some discretion in determining who is eligible for a permit to carry a concealed weapon in public. Both men had sought for concealed-carry permits but were refused because local authorities found that neither had "proper reason" for requiring the license for self-defense. The conservative justices who signed the majority opinion, which was authored by Clarence Thomas, did not dispute with the municipal leaders' decisions. Thomas says that Nash did not allege that he faced a specific risk to his safety. Koch was in a like situation to Nash. In spite of the state's claimed interest in limiting gun ownership, the conservative majority decided in their favor.

Their decision ties the state to a narrative about firearms and gun rights that conservative justices have been telling since District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) and McDonald v. Chicago (2010). "In District of Columbia v. Heller and McDonald v. Chicago, we acknowledged that the Second and Fourteenth Amendments safeguard the right of an average, law-abiding individual to keep a firearm for self-defense in the home," Thomas writes in his judgment for Bruen. Consistent with Heller and McDonald, we now believe that the Second and Fourteenth Amendments safeguard an individual's right to carry a weapon for self-defense outside the house. The Court's conservative justices do not care about the repercussions of repealing the Sullivan Act. New York will have no choice but to accept it.

Within minutes after the ruling's announcement, Governor Kathy Hochul, who described it as "shocking" and "terrifying in its magnitude," declared that she would convene a special session of the state legislature to reply, most likely within the next few weeks. In reaction to the racist mass shooting in Buffalo, Hochul approved a package of new gun control regulations a few days ago, including increasing the minimum age for purchasing an AR-15-style weapon from 18 to 21. New York was one of the few states to implement stringent gun control legislation in reaction to horrific massacres in recent years, and its legislators will now be challenged with replacing the Sullivan Act. This would likely include designating public locations such as schools and hospitals as "sensitive zones" where weapons are prohibited, even for permit-holders. New York City, which suffered an increase in shootings last year and where debates about crime and violence have recently dominated the city's inner monologue, will undoubtedly get a great deal of attention during the discussion. When questioned on Thursday if the New York City subways constitute as "sensitive areas," Hochul said, "In my perspective, yes." More than a century ago, when Big Tim first introduced the Sullivan Act, he did not foresee what its implications would be. No one knows for certain what the following century will be like as a result of the law's repeal.